1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an air conditioner, and more particularly to drive means for rotating wind direction louver boards in an air outlet of said air conditioner and a diffuser installed below said air outlet.
2. Description of the Related Art
At the air outlet of the air conditioner, up-down wind direction boards (flaps) are provided for adjusting heat-exchanged air uniformly toward a room or, in some case, for locally adjusting the wind direction. FIG. 7 is a sectional view indicating an overall construction of the conventional air conditioner, and FIG. 8 is an enlarged cross-sectional view of the air outlet portion. Also, the air conditioner comprises an indoor unit and an outdoor unit, and the air conditioner described herein means the indoor unit of a wall mounted type.
That is, this air conditioner as an indoor unit is equipped with a housing 1 designed as an indoor wall mounted type; in this example, air inlets 2 are provided respectively at the front face and the top face of the housing 1, and an air outlet 5 is provided at the lower portion of the front face of the housing 1. A heat exchanger 3 and an air blowing fan 4 are provided in an air passage from the air inlet 2 to air outlet 5 inside the housing 1.
Inside the air outlet 5, provided are two up-down wind direction boards such as flaps 7 and 8 for adjusting the up-down wind direction and a plurality of lateral air direction boards such as slats of louver 6 for adjusting wind motion in lateral direction. Generally, the flaps 7 and 8 are arranged at the front side of the lateral wind direction boards (louver) 6 when seen from the external side of the air conditioning unit (within the room). And the flaps are supported by support pieces 7b and 8b suspended from an upper wall portion of the air outlet 5 in such a manner that their rotation axes 7a and 8b become almost horizontal. That is, the up-down flaps 7 and 8 are rotatable around the horizontal rotation axes 7a and 8a as the centers between the initial stop position closing the air outlet 5 and the maximum open position at which the flaps are almost in vertically downward direction as shown in FIG. 7 and FIG. 8.
Though only one louver slat 6 is shown in FIG. 7 and FIG. 8, actually a plurality of slats are provided in the direction orthogonal to the paper surface of the drawings. Each slat 6 of the lateral wind direction board (louver) is supported through a bush 6a by the upper wall portion of the air outlet 5 in such a manner that each slat 6 will rotate laterally around the axis of rotation which is almost orthogonal to the axis of rotation of the flaps 7 and 8. Also, an arm 6b is connected to each bush 6a, and a clip 6c for synchronously rotating each slat 6 is attached to said arm 6b.
As the air blowing fan 4 is operated, air is sucked from the air inlet 2, heat-exchanged by a heat exchanger 3 and then blown to the inside of room from the air outlet 5 and, at that time, the lateral wind direction is adjusted by the lateral wind direction boards (louver) and, at the same time, the up-down wind direction is adjusted by up-down direction boards (flaps) 7 and 8.
In this way, the various wind directions can be adjusted. However, if the flaps 7 and 8 are set almost downward vertically to the maximum open position as shown in FIG. 7 and FIG. 8 during a heating operation or a rapid cooling operation, for example, then the wind blows hard against the flaps 7 and 8, and the gap between the lower flap 8 and the bottom edge of the air outlet 5 becomes narrower, so that the air blowing efficiency is decreased.
Therefore at the bottom of the air outlet 5, a diffuser 9 constituting a part of said air outlet 5 is installed rotatably around an almost horizontal rotation axis 9a. And if the opening angle of the flaps 7 and 8 is made larger as stated above, then the diffuser 9 is rotated counter-clockwise in FIG. 7 and FIG. 8 and the air outlet 5 is made wider.
In this way, in rotating the flaps 7 and 8 and the diffuser 9, conventionally an exclusive motor 11 for driving the flaps and a motor 19 for driving the diffuser are installed respectively.
The motor 11 for driving the flaps is installed on one side of the side wall portion 5a of the air outlet 5 as shown by a chain line in FIG. 8, and a drive gear 20 is attached to a drive shaft 11a of the motor. Driven gears 22 and 23 are attached respectively to the rotation axes 7a and 8a of the flaps 7 and 8, and these driven gears 22 and 23 are interlocked with a drive gear 20 through an intermediate gear 21. By doing this, the flaps 7 and 8 are synchronously driven by the motor 11 and can be set to an arbitrary angle of tilt between the initial stop position closing the air outlet 5 and the maximum open position almost vertically downward as shown in FIG. 7 and FIG. 8.
The motor 19 for driving the diffuser is arranged at a position on lower rear side of a main body casing 1a determining a boundary line of an air passage inside the housing 1 and rotates the diffuser 9 to the position shown in FIG. 7 and FIG. 8 when the flaps 7 and 8 are rotated to the side of the maximum open position, and the frontage of the air outlet 5 is widened. In this way, the motor 19 rotates the diffuser 9 in response to the movement of the flaps 7 and 8, and the motor control is performed by control means such as CPU (central processing unit, not shown in the drawings).
By the use of the diffuser 9, the wind direction adjustment can be performed more effectively without lowering the efficiency of air blowing. However, in the conventional way, there are certain problems because the diffuser driving motor 19 and its motor drive circuit are required, and thus an increase in the production cost is unavoidable. In addition, a space for mounting the motor 19 is required and this is troublesome in making the housing 1 compact.
The present invention has been made for solving the conventional problems stated above. And its object is to provide an air conditioner capable of driving the up-down direction boards (flaps) and the diffuser by a single motor without requiring a motor exclusively for the diffuser.